We destroy everything, even the plant species: a study shock led byTartu University (Estonia) indicates that human activities can negatively influence the biodiversity of the wild flora up to hundreds of kilometers away and are able to Annient four out of five species.
The conclusion confirms other previous research: by way of example, a review work ofInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at the end of 2024 had shown that 38 percent of trees in the world risk extinctionin fact, at the moment the Red List also includes 166,061 plant species, of which 46,337 classified as “threatened”.
How the study was conducted
The research now published, in particular, has evaluated the state of health of ecosystems all over the worldconsidering both the number of plant species present and the dark diversity, the one that includes the ecologically suitable species.
Over 200 researchers studied the plants in almost 5,500 sites in 119 world regionsin all continents, and on each site they recorded all the plant species on 100 m² by identifying the dark diversitywhich includes the native species that could live there but absent.
Up to about 300 km², the region around each site has been considered potentially able to influence the target site: this has allowed researchers to fully understand the potential of plant diversity in each of them and to measure how much of this potential diversity was actually present.
The level of “human disorder” in each region has been measured using thehuman imprint index, which includes factors such as the density of the human population, changes in the use of soil (for example, urban development and conversion of natural land into cultivable soils) and infrastructures (roads and railways).
In fact, the traditional measurements of biodiversity, such as the simple count of the number of species recorded, did not detect this impact because the natural variation of biodiversity between regions and ecosystems hid the real scope of the human impact.
Shock results
The study revealed that in the regions with little human impact, such as the vast forests of North America or the Tundra of Greenland, ecosystems generally contain over a third of the potentially suitable species, while other species remain absent mainly for natural reasons, such as habitats too distant from each other or the lack of seed dispersion systems.
On the contrary, in the forests of Western and southern Europe e in other regions strongly affected by human activitiesthe sites studied contained Only one species in five suitable.
And not only that: the plant diversity in a site is negatively influenced by the human impact Up to hundreds of kilometers away.
The results indicate that biodiversity can also be reduced to ecosystems that have not been directly changed by man – explains Meelis Pärtel, main author of the study – but are in areas where human activities have caused the fragmentation of the habitat or have had a widespread impact on natural areas, for example through pollution
This result is alarming because it shows that anthropic disorders have a much wider impact than previously thought, even reaching natural reserves. Pollution, deforestation, abandonment of waste, trampling and fires caused by humans can trigger local extinctions and prevent recolonization
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The study was published on Nature.
Sources: University of Tartu / Nature
